There are known services for transmitting the information about traffic jams and the like to remote persons. In such services, stationary cameras are installed on roadsides, and the images of roads picked up by these cameras are delivered to persons who request them. For example, a service called MONET (registered trademark) is so designed that the information about road conditions is delivered as images to cellular phone users.
In this form of service, however, information about any point cannot be viewed. To cope with this, techniques for picking up the images of various locations and storing them in databases beforehand have been disclosed. (Refer to, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-236990 and the Specification of Japanese Patent No. 3019299.) Also, a technique for picking up the image of any point dozens of times and thereby updating a database has been proposed.
However, when there are a plurality of pieces of data of images picked up in a continuing district on different occasions in a database, a problem arises. Users who receive delivered images in the database and continuously view them can feel something is wrong because of differences in image pickup environments such as weather.
With the foregoing taken into account, the present invention is intended to efficiently acquire images or deliver images so that uncomfortable feeling given to users who view images picked up is lessened.
Another object of the present invention is to make it possible to smoothly view images acquired and delivered.